This sword, together with the rapier, I made at a bronze casting course
from Neil Burridge (see his website: Bronze
Age Craft). I did this course to the some
experience in bronze casting, so I could start out on my own and have
some idea of what to expect. The course was a truly unique experience,
and I'd highly
recommend it to anyone. And if you don't believe me, read my review
of the experience on this site (along with many photos):
http://mitglied.lycos.de/tgrb/bronze_casting_Threwortha_farm_26_28_maart_2003/The mould material and casting process are not fully authentic, which
nobody can within a single day. But the method itself is very similar,
and about as close as anyone has ever gotten to casting swords authentically
to my knowledge. So far casting a full sword authentically has remained
an elusive goal amongst bronze casters. Hopefully I'll get there someday!

The blade

Original

Found: Icklingham, Suffolk, UKAge: late bronze age

The mould is directly copied from a drawing, so in terms of shape and
size it will be a close match to the original. Aside perhaps from details
in thickness distribution that is, as the drawing was only 2 dimensional.
The weight at least is close at 600g, which is the typical weight for swords
of this type.

The mould

Material: lightweight ceramic material

The mould is carved from a ceramic material, which is soft and easy
to shape. This made it possible to make the mould in a matter of a couple
of hours. The same method of carving a shape from the mould I've now adapted
for my own castings, for which I use clay or clay/sand instead, and it
works very well. It's the same method which was used for stone moulds,
only that stone is a lot harder and therefore more difficult to shape.
The only problem of this method, compared to pressing a wooden shape into
soft clay, is that it's more difficult to visualize what the final shape
will be (especially in terms of thickness).

Casting

Here you see the mal just after casting. The bronze is
still glowing, which you can see through the seem. The mould was placed
at an angle, which makes the bronze flow better into the mould. The mould
wasn't closed well enough near the top, resulting in bronze pouring out
of the mould. Fortunately though the mould had completely filled.

Casting result

Here is the sword just after casting and still hot. My
very first bronzecasting and my very first sword! Little did I realize
just how much work it would require to finish it:)

Finishing the blade

5 May 2003

Here is the blade after the flash and feed had been removed,
and I've started sanding the blade. For this I used a quartz riverstone.
You can see me working on this in the photo on the previous page. The side
of the handle has already been sanded smooth. The photo on the right shows
a defect in the metal, a gap in the hilt. Unfortunately it's right at the
weakest point of the blade, but as I'll only use it for display that won't
be a problem. The rest of the blade is very sound, without any inclusions.

8 November 2003

This is the sword after many days of working on it in Archeon
(while also speaking to the visitors as well). The last few months I haven't
been able to work on it, so unfortunately I haven't finished the blade
before the end of the season as I had planned.

19 May 2004

This season I've spend most of my free time in casting,
so I haven't done much work on this sword. Here is te latest status. I've
started on the blade itself, but it will require a lot of sanding to remove
most of the irregularities.

The hilt

For the hilt I'm planning on using taxus wood. The two
halves will be attached on either side with bronze rivets, 7 in total.
To shape the wood I'll be using my bronze chisel.

The rivets

My first attempt at casting the rivets failed. The bronze
wasn't liquide enough, and didn't fill up the mould.